Monday, March 24, 2014

Zero tolerance

Last week at the gdc I noticed two themes. The first was "how to make money in your game by fucking your players over", the other was a pretty strong push against sexism, racism, misogyny, etc. In one of the better sessions the talker called for zero tolerance in games.

The game I play the most is valve's amazing dota 2. It's a very hard team game and people get very emotional in the game, which turns to the typical gay bashing, sexist and racist outbursts from players. Most of the time if it is not directed at me I used to just ignore it, but no more. As a community, industry and most importantly as human beings we need to put a stop to this. Valve have an excellent reporting system and from now on I plan on reporting anyone using racist, sexist, queer-ist and other bigoted language. Everyone. Zero tolerance. Additionally I am going to point out to people that they are being douche-bags. I doubt the latter will work but maybe if everyone did it then it would help.

This is my call to arms, everyone that plays games with other people, keep your frustration from boiling over to using terms that you wouldn't ever consider using to someone you didn't know's face. Call people out for this kind of behaviour.

Especially game developers, please show a zero tolerance for these kind of actions in your products.

At my job at Twitch I plan on advocating a zero tolerance policy. I am not an admin nor do I have direct control over them, but I do have a loud voice and I plan on shouting as loud as I can.

I repeat, we as a community, industry and human beings need to put a stop to this where-ever and whenever we can. There is no need for a 10 year old penny arcade comic to still be true.